Millicent Hearst - Biography

Biography

She was the daughter of George Willson and Hannah Murray Willson. Following in the footsteps of their father, a moderately successful vaudevillian, Millicent and her older sister Anita performed on the stage in 1897 as “bicycle girls” in Edward Rice’s The Girl From Paris at the Herald Square Theater on Broadway. The 16 year-old beauty caught the eye of the 34 year-old Hearst, a lonely bachelor and notorious stage-door Johnny at the time.

The couple’s first dates were chaperoned by her sister Anita. After a lengthy courtship, the controversial publisher and aspiring politician Hearst married 22 year-old Millicent Willson on April 28, 1903.

Millicent gave birth to five sons: Born just 5 days before the Hearsts' 1st wedding anniversary, George Randolph Hearst, born on April 23, 1904; William Randolph Hearst, Jr., born on January 27, 1908; John Randolph Hearst, born in 1910; and the twins, Randolph Apperson Hearst and David Whitmire (née Elbert Willson) Hearst, born on December 2, 1915. Phoebe Apperson Hearst, the very proper mother of William Randolph Hearst, was initially dismayed by Millicent’s humble origins, but with the birth of the grandchildren she soon warmed to her daughter-in-law.

Although they remained legally married until Hearst's death in 1951, Millicent established a separate life in New York as a prominent socialite and philanthropist, and only rarely visited her husband at his estate in California, often referred to as "Hearst Castle".

Her social activism flowered during World War I when she was appointed by Mayor John Hylan as Chairman of the Mayor’s Committee of Women on National Defense. The committee sponsored entertainments for servicemen, operated a canteen, encouraged enlistments, sponsored patriotic rallies and provided staples such as coal, milk, and ice to the needy. Millicent Hearst also served on wartime committees to raise funds for the rebuilding of France and the relief of French orphans.

Millicent Hearst is most distinguished for founding the Free Milk Fund for Babies in 1921. The fund provided free milk to the poor of New York City for decades. The Milk Fund sponsored many fund raising activities such as rodeos and boxing matches. Mrs. Hearst hosted charitable fund raisers for a variety of causes including crippled children, unemployed girls, the New York Women’s Trade League, the Democratic National Committee, the Evening Journal - New York Journal Christmas Fund, and the Village Welfare of Port Washington, New York. During the Depression, Eleanor Roosevelt joined Millicent Hearst at many of these charitable events.

Millicent Willson Hearst died on December 5, 1974, more than two decades after the death of her husband, William Randolph Hearst. She is buried at Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, New York. She was 92.